Comment by lukan
15 hours ago
This is exactly the reason why in germany we have now a broad ticket for short distance trains. Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket. Initially just 10€, now 60€ a month.
Still a bargain, you can go anywhere as mich forth and back as you want (just not the dedicated long distance trains, so going through all of germany takes a bit longer).
You can tell this is a true success in Germany because 95% of local passengers now use it. It also caused a significant increase in ridership, putting the already overloaded rail system under a lot more pressure while taking away income from the rail companies (after making it cheaper).
Well yes, the idea is to have more people use the trains, so yes also more trains are needed(and more investment and replacement of the Bahn management) in general, but as far as I know there is no income taken away, as it is subsidized and compensated on the federal level.
> no income taken away, as it is subsidized and compensated on the federal level
Only 50% of the relative loss of transit agencies is subsidised by the federal government, the other 50% gets subsidised by the respective state. And since the compensation is calculated in relation to the prices of monthly subscription tickets on routes in the respective transit area, transit agencies are left with even less.
Additionally, a lawsuit determined that the train network price cap for public transport is illegal, further increasing costs for the states.
This already has caused service reductions in multiple states, e.g. just now in Berlin additional overground Metro services during commuter peaks got halfed. With the results of the lawsuit and now interest from the federal goverment to put more funding into public transport, a lot more services will get axed in the next 3 years.
Problem with this approach though is it makes the system very vulnerable to political changes. How much of a problem this is in Germany I'm not sure.
1 reply →
Inconvenient truth: It is a bad use of taxpayers' money to highly subsidise train tickets when (1) people can afford to pay more (2) huge structural investments are needed in the country, (3) economic growth has stalled for years.
Wait till you hear about how we fund roads and how much it costs to drive on most of them, lol.
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> Government realized they fail to meet EU regulations in reducing CO2, so they rushed to implement a cheap german wide ticket.
Or... Russia's attack of Ukraine caused a spike of energy prices.
Now which one of us has the correct history, and which is wrong, and why? Is it revisionism?
Neither/both? It was introduced for 9€ because of the invasion, and then continued for 49€ - partially - because of the CO2 contributions